Interesting Links for 05-05-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Income tax rises and new wealth taxes on the way for richer Scots, signals Humza Yousaf

(tags:snp tax GoodNews scotland )

2. Neil Gaiman on Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton

(tags:neilgaiman CSLewis Tolkien GKChesterston )

3. Have some fun poetry, both accidental and deliberate

(tags:poetry )

4. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Screws up on Trans Kids' Care

(tags:transgender LGBT healthcare research )

5. 20 of the most commonly used passwords in 2022

(tags:passwords security OhForFucksSake epicfail )

6. Let the dishes hit the floor, they aren't yours anyway. (A mental health metaphor)

(tags:mentalhealth metaphor )

7. I just donated to the Trans Healthcare Delays Appeal Crowdfunder

(tags:UK transgender healthcare law CrowdFunding )

Comments

[hairyears]

7: Thanks for the heads-up on the GoodLaw crowdfunder: I have contributed my Widow's Mite.

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

And thank you for the phrase, not one I'd heard before, although I know the story.

[wildeabandon]

Thank you both.

[melchar]

Ouch! Those passwords! I could feel my brain trying to crawl away & hide.

Passwords

[wildeabandon]

It would be really surprising if the 20 most commonly used passwords weren't obvious and easy to guess, because a strong password is by its very nature unlikely to be common.

And 'guest' at number three, suggests to me that at least some people are using them in situations where a password is needed to create an account, but it doesn't actually need to be secure. In a similar vein, my phone passcode is pretty easily guessable, because the level of security I'm looking for is "does it stop my arse making phonecalls on my behalf?"

Re: Passwords

[andrewducker]

It's true, most of the time I don't care *that* much, and the ones I do care about have 2FA.

[calimac]

2) I was at the conference where Gaiman originally gave that speech. It was just as moving as you'd expect.

[doubtingmichael]

I'm not that surprised about Hossenfeldder. I watched a few of her videos, but I decided she is (a) clickbaity ("Special Relativity: This Is Why You Misunderstand It"), contrarian ("What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics") and quite willing to hold forth on things she wasn't really an expert on (with viewing it, I suspect "Do Humans Have Souls?" comes under that one).

But this makes my opinion of her a lot lower.

[andrewducker]

Yes. I first encountered her though what I thought was quite a good video, but she seems to have become caught up in clickbait and view-chasing. Or always was, it's hard to tell.

[doubtingmichael]

Oh god. Her latest video is "I don't believe the 2nd law of thermodynamics". I refuse to click that link.